Highlighting female trailblazers like Audre Lorde and Shirley Chisholm, the film series features enlightening documentary portraits and compelling narratives by and about visionary women who refused to be silenced.
BAM just announced the next installment of its Women at Work film series. From Friday, August 10 through Thursday, August 16, BAMcinématek presents Women at Work: Radical Creativity, curated by Dessane Lopez Cassell and featuring special guests Nina Collins, daughter of Kathleen Collins, and filmmakers Reina Gossett, Sasha Wortzel and Shirin Neshat for post-screening Q&As.
"Though often overlooked, the creative expression of women has had a profound and continuous effect on our cultural and political landscape," said Lopez Cassell. "Highlighting seminal figures such as Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Pina Bausch, and Marsha P. Johnson, this selection of historical portraits, narratives and experimental video works offers a cross-section of accounts by and about women who have refused to be second-guessed or silenced."
Women at Work: Radical Creativity kicks off on Friday, August 10, with Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground, one of the first films to explore relationships and sexuality from the perspective of a black female director. This comedic drama follows a philosophy professor (Seret Scott) and her artist husband (Bill Gunn) on a life-changing summer in upstate New York. Saturday, August 11, highlights the work of Shirley Chisholm and Angela Davis through the eyes of director Shola Lynch with Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed and Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.
Radical Creativity showcases three critically acclaimed features including Deniz Gamze Erguven's Mustang, a heartbreaking film following five, Turkish teen sisters' coming-of-age in an oppressive Turkish home; Persepolis, an animated fable chronicling a woman's life during Iran's Islamic revolution; and Wim Wenders's Pina, an ecstatic tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch on Sunday, August 12.
In Looking for Oum Kulthum, featured on Monday, August 13, Iranian art star Shirin Neshat crafts a spellbinding, multilayered reflection on the sacrifices required of a female artist working within a patriarchal society. Following the next day, Tuesday, August 14, BAM presents Audre Lorde: A Litany for Survival, celebrating one of the godmothers of intersectional feminism whose work gives voice to society's most marginalized.
The series concludes on Thursday, August 16, with An Evening with Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel, including six quietly radical short films by the two directors, including the New York premiere of Happy Birthday, Marsha!, a portrait of iconic transgender artist and activist Marsha 'Pay it No Mind' Johnson in the hours before she ignited the Stonewall Riots. Other shorts in the program include Gossett's Personal Things and Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, and Wortzel's River of Grass, Paint it Again and Grit and Grind, co-directed by Wortzel and Felix Endara.
For more information, tickets and a complete schedule, go here.
